Ron Unz said: ” A sense of the real world impact of these grim statistics may be found in the stratified 2011 Census-ACS data for major American cities. The three urban centers with the largest black populations are New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and together they contain over one-third more adult black women than black men. The corresponding national shortfall of black males runs well into the millions, partly accounting for the notorious “marriage gap” problems faced by women of their background. Those millions of missing black men are generally dead or in prison. ”

But is that true? First, the fraction of young black men who are currently in stir is high, but not as high as you might conclude from reading Ron’s piece. A chart on total ethnic incarceration rates per 100,000 males in various ranges could be read to suggest that more than a quarter of young black males (18-29) are in the big house at any given time, but that’s not the case. There are about 2.2 million men in some flavor of slammer: about 86,000 in juvie, 206,000 in Federal prison, 1.3 million in the state pen, and 750,000 in some local jail. About 39% of those cons are black – 555,000 black men were in state or federal prison (2011 figures) .

Note that most people don’t stay that long in the county jail: the median stay at Cook County Jail is 12 days, the average stay is 53 days. Being put in the county jail does not mean you’re imprisoned for much of that year.

I was able to find some state figures the actual percentage of young black men behind bars at a given moment. In Maryland, about 10% of black men 20-30, In Baltimore, almost one in five.

So there definitely are a lot of black men in the jug – but not millions. Less than one million. That still has a significant effect on crime rates, since those imprisoned are presumably the most crime-prone.

But are there really millions of missing black men? Let’s clarify that: those in prison aren’t really ‘missing’ – they are merely elsewhere.

Judging from the Census numbers, quite a few seem to have vanished. Looking at the 2000 census, the sex ratio (male divided by females) for blacks is 1.02 for 15-19 year olds, 0.95 for 20-24 year olds, 0.906 for 25-29 year olds, 0.90 for 30-34 year olds. Remember, the Census counts people in the clink: these guys are really missing.

Most people who have encountered these stats seem to have assumed that those missing were homicides. The problem is, that’s impossible. Look at the 7% drop in the sex ratio between the 15-19 group and the 20-24 group – a 5 year difference. That’s more than 1% of young black men dying per year. Yet the highest homicide rate ever reported for that age group of black men – at the peak of the crack wars, in 1993 – was 195.9 per 100,000 for black men 18-24 – two-tenths of a percent. How do you lose 7% in 5 years with a per-year mortality of 0.2%? In order for killings to to explain the drop in the sex ratio, the real homicide rate among young black men would had to have been seven times higher than the highest rates ever reported by law enforcement.

The homicide rate among young black men is a good deal lower in recent years, or so they say: 91.1 per 100,000 among 18-24 year olds in 2008. But the drop is the sex ratio is still there. In the 2010 census, the sex ratio is 0.987 for 15-19 year old blacks, 0.91 for 20-24 olds, 0.914 for 25-29 year olds, 0.83 for 30-34 year olds. The homicide rate would have to be fifteen times higher than the official numbers to explain the drop. I don’t think that law enforcement is perfect, but I really doubt that they fail to notice 90% of the dead guys lying in the streets of Washington or Detroit.

Correction: I misunderstood some of those Census results. Those numbers are for non-institutionalized civilians. Much of that low sex ratio is indeed a consequence of black guys in prison. But not all. Adjusting for the lower black sex ratio at birth and prison differences [1% of white men age 30-34 are in state/federal prison, 7.3% of black men] age, the black sex ratio is still 9.7% lower than you would expect. Putting it another way, allowing for imprisoned men, the true white sex ratio drop 2% from birth to age 30-34, the true black sex ratio drops 11.7%.

Well, since they probably did not emigrate and almost certainly did not evaporate, my guess would be that they are still there, but the Census can’t find them. Census counts domesticated people, difficulties with drifters are to be expected.

In the population as a whole, traffic accident mortality is about as common as homicide among males in that age group, but not for blacks, who have average rates of vehicular fatalities but far more homicide than average.

Both homicide and accidents are heavily male-biased and reduce the sex ratio, but I don’t think they’re enough to explain the drop in the sex ratio in blacks, particularly in the 2010 numbers. 0.83 for 30-34 year olds? You’d need a real war, or massive alien abductions.

The UK has had a Census since 1801, but now there is talk of giving it up. This is because there are cheaper ways to get population estimates, so the Govt says. I think that the reason is that illegals and drifters know damn well it is better not to participate. Again, it was men that went missing. The reason is that a woman can claim benefits if there is no man around supposedly contributing to the household income, so the men slept elsewhere on Census night. Benefits preserved.

sex selective abortion (like in Red China, but the other way, because Margie Sanger was right and the ghetto knows it), inflated census counts of women and minor children (to game head-count based welfare systems; like UNRWA), criminals living off the grid (because Korematsu); for the middle-class blacks: young and old men are in the army (and won’t show up on certain counts, neither will they die, they all get staff sergeant REMF jobs these days) and ‘old’ black men die young (ish) compared to whites and orientals

>>That still has a significant effect on crime rates, since those imprisoned are presumably the most crime-prone.

Crime-prone? Sure, but that is meaningless assertion in times when downloading songs could be a crime. You should try to demonstrate that these incarcerated man are violence-prone or admit that our justice system is broken and incarcerates way too many people when compared with any other country in the world.

Naturally, I already have thought about it. Perhaps more than you have thought or could think about anything.

In state prisons, where most of the hard time is spent, the preponderance of black men are there for violence (49%) and property crimes (15%). Like murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, fraud. About 20 percent are imprisoned for drug offenses.

You don’t get sent to state prison for jaywalking: you usually have to have committed multiple felonies. I mean, the burglar who broke into my house and stole our car had been arrested 37 times and hasn’t seen the state pen yet.

You might note that the arrest rate for black men is much same in black-run cities like DC, Detroit, or Atlanta. It’s a bit hard to see how black cops arresting black perps is all white racism.

But lots of people seem to think so. I figure they’re crazy. Like you.

And the drug offenses are almost always plea downs from much more serious offenses. A couple years ago, when state governments were desperate to trim their budgets, they tried to shed a good chunk of their prison populations. They were hard-pressed, though, to find inmates they were willing to let loose.

Reminds me of a newspaper article I read years and years ago, about guys being paroled for first-degree murder in California, inspired by people who were complained about Lawrence Singleton being paroled 8 years after raping a girl, cutting off her forearms with a hatchet, and throwing her over a cliff. The point was that you really had to work at it to get convicted of murder in the first degree in California in those days: they mentioned a guy who killed someone over a 50-cent piece, a woman who threw her children into a gorge, etc. There was only one guy whose crime sounded it id had been committed by a human being: he’d killed out of jealousy, although with plenty of premeditation.

Of course, if I were King, you wouldn’t have these problems with dubious parolees, or high prison costs, either.

Singleton went back to prison in Florida after a couple of thefts (and a murder). He died of cancer on death row – you know what they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

So you suggest US incarceration rate, at world’s #1 and astonishing 716 per 100,000 population is just a result of US population’s violent tendencies? Compare that to England’s just 148 per 100,000. No matter how much you’d like to blame this on a specific race, numbers simply don’t add up. The only logical conclusion is that we incarcerate too many people regardless of race.

Once you come to terms with the fact that US incarcerate excessively, you can start considering effects of poverty on conviction rates. Public defenders mostly operate to crank out pleas, so justice very much fail anyone not able to afford services of defense lawyer.

It might be the case that black men are more prone to violence, but simply pointing at incarcerated black man as the only necessary proof shows your ideological shortcomings.

“No matter how much you’d like to blame this on a specific race, numbers simply don’t add up.”

Yes, they do. In the aggregate, black men behave like this just about everywhere. Not just in Harlem, Detroit, and Atlanta, GA, but everywhere from Kingston to Stockholm and beyond, and even in your beloved UK. Foreigner observers who sneer at America’s high incarceration rate simply have no clue what they are talking about — it’s either favelas from coast to coast, or a couple of Tyrones wind up behind bars for the better part of their youth. Until somebody finds a better solution that actually works, we will simply have to bear the collateral damage.

As for poverty, I wonder why Seoul and Tokyo did not spontaneously degenerate into open-air orgies of looting, raping, and robbing after being (literally) bombed to the Stone Age just half a century ago. I think I know why. The descendants of Vietnamese boat people in the United States are far less likely to end up in prison than their black or hispanic peers — again, appealing to poverty does nothing for your end of the argument.

“Yes, they do. In the aggregate, black men behave like this just about everywhere. Not just in Harlem, Detroit, and Atlanta, GA, but everywhere from Kingston to Stockholm and beyond, and even in your beloved UK. ”

I recall reading a comparison of school exam scores in the UK and in that sample the black IQ was in the mid 90s. African immigrants in the US also have higher SES meaures than even whites. I have not seen the data for it, but perhaps the blacks in the UK are less prone to violent crime than American blacks. There could be an immigrant selection effect in the UK (to a lesser degree) than the immigrant selection effect exists for black immigrants in the US. It would contribute to Europeans not comprehending why the US incarceration rate is so high.

I’m not sure the UK rates for violent crime by black british are that much different from african-american rates. Although perhaps it may differ more if you break it down by migrants from Africa compared to those from the Carribean.

When I was mugged on the subway in 1981, the subway workers at the station (all black men, curiously ashamed, why?) called a traffic cop for me. He sauntered up to me and said, “Hi, little lady, heard you got robbed. Was they black?”

He was black.

A couple of weeks later, I go to the traffic poh-lice HQ in the Jackson Heights station and leafed thru albums of perp suspects. (This was 1981, remember, pre-digital stone age.)

Not one white suspect. A few Hispanic looking types. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of black males, teenaged to mid-20s looking.

150/100,000 white criminality rate, based on worst-case rounding up of EU data.
That leaves us with 550/100,000 black criminality rate.

With 2010 census telling us Whites are 72% and blacks are 12% of total population and US DoJ data telling us blacks are 40% of incarcerated population you can see that you cannot blame black criminality on US incarceration rate.

So put you Klan robes down and find different plausible explanation. If US incarceration is higher due to criminality/violence of population it is because ALL races are more criminal/violent OR more likely that US jails too many people for non-violent crimes.

This post (like too many on this blog) reflects a narrow cis-genderist perspective. Who’s to say that the “missing” black men are not people of color formerly identified as male who have come out as strong beautiful black women?

You’d think someone in the Census bureau would be doing a sort-of roll-forward analysis by cohort to try to validate the numbers. For example, for the 20 – 24 age group, you have those aging into the group from the last census, some aging out of it, some dying (by cause of death), some emigrating, some immigrating. So I’d think someone would be putting together a little exhibit detailing these changes to make sure that the published numbers make sense. If as some commentors have suggested there’s a bunch who are just evading the census, this should stand out in the analysis.

Maybe these dudes don’t get counted on the census because they don’t have permanent definite homes? When you fill out a census form, do you not indicate the amount of people who live in your household? A woman in a ghetto will tend to be a single mother and have an official project residence where she can count herself and the children that she claims live there with her. The men may be like boyfriends who live sometimes with their girlfriend, sometimes in the stairwell, sometimes with their grandma etc. So, no one counts them sometimes.

This is what I was thinking as well. Underclass lives and households are really different from middle class lives and households. Underclass women tend to have permanent addresses, and underclass men tend to wander from household to household (relative to middle class people). Presumably the Census knows this, though, and tries to deal with it.

Anon, you seem to be new here. You are making large assumptions, suggesting that we are not giving the conventional wisdom a fair shake. That we just missed it somehow, and you asserting it forcefully will snap us back into reality.

In fact, many of us had college courses or read many articles in the Best Magazines back in the day and are more than a little familiar with the possibilities you suggest. I was a milk-and-water socialist back in the 60’s and 70’s and have worked as a social worker these 30-odd years. I am eminently familiar with not only statistics you cite, but the half-baked theories that supposedly explain them. I was dragged kicking and screaming out of conventional liberalis because I got tired of losing arguments to people who weren’t as smart as I was, merely because they had better facts.

You know, I’m surprised more people don’t mention how the desire to win arguments is just about the only motivation strong enough to make well-socialized people express politically incorrect views.

Unlike you, I have never lost an argument to someone with “better”, i.e., politically incorrect, facts. However, I did occasionally lose an argument to liberals when I was younger due to my unwillingness to state the truth outright. For just one example, it’s hard to justify men’s monopoly on nobel prizes if you are unwilling to cite the bell curve of male/female intelligence. Absent that willingness to cite hatefacts, liberal outrage will win the day. Many ideas that are simple common sense are totally unjustifiable in an argument without politically incorrect facts to back them up.

I had a colleague infatuated with Amartya Sen who wanted to emulate Sen’s “missing Indian women” paper by looking at ‘missing’ African-American men. He asked me to do the empirical part of his paper and I ran numbers from the CDC’s Multiple Causes of Death file. I found that the sex ratio at birth for whites is 1.05, and for blacks 1.03–black men are missing because they are never born! And it makes sense (I think): in an environment where males have very high variance in number of offspring, having a daughter is a safer bet. In West Africa, with high levels of pathogen stress, females mating with healthiest males will have the most grandchildren–so the few most vigourous males have high reproductive success through the channels of promiscuity and polygyny (both wide-open channels in West Africa) (I think I want to cite Robert Trivers here, but been away from this a long time and just can’t remember).

He asked me to do the empirical part of his paper and I ran numbers from the CDC’s Multiple Causes of Death file. I found that the sex ratio at birth for whites is 1.05, and for blacks 1.03–black men are missing because they are never born!

I guess that might explain why the discrepancy mysteriously rises to a third by adulthood.

There’s a lot more to it than that. Look, sure, the sex ratio is a little lower at birth in blacks than in whites, maybe 1.02 instead of 1.05. But by time you get to the 30-34 age group, it’s 1.02 in whites and 0.83 in blacks !

so can i ask the dumb question here – does this mean the census is not counting the black population correctly? perhaps our nice poll workers don’t spend enough time in dangerous neighborhoods? unless widespread alien abductions have been occurring right before our noses.

I’m sure that’s true- that the black population is not being counted correctly by the census at all, but that doesn’t explain the gender disparity given that blacks in prison must be correctly counted at a much higher rate than out of prison blacks are counted correctly.

“Census forms were delivered by the U.S. Post Office beginning March 15, 2010. The number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was approximately 134 million.[7] Although the questionnaire used April 1 as the reference date as to where a person was living, an insert dated March 15, 2010 included the following printed in bold type: ‘Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today.’

“The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%.[8] From April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called “non-response follow-up” (NRFU).”

I don’t imagine a hefty % of the poor, the under-educated, the downright illiterate, the anti-social filled out a census form, and I doubt seriously that census takers were diligent in their efforts to “visit households that did not return a form” after a few knocks on doors told them what kind of reception they could expect.

“I don’t imagine a hefty % of the poor, the under-educated, the downright illiterate, the anti-social filled out a census form, and I doubt seriously that census takers were diligent in their efforts to “visit households that did not return a form” after a few knocks on doors told them what kind of reception they could expect.”

I worked the 2010 Census. There were quite a few houses where people came back to their supervisor saying ‘these people don’t want to be counted.’ I was a supervisor, so I’d go knock on their doors. These were career felons. They did not want to be counted. They weren’t angry at me, it was more like dealing with a cop running down the ‘use of force’ checklist. From the other side of the cops and robbers game.

Misdreavus – Some time in the past one of my coworkers was a Vietnamese-American lady. One day in a casual conversation she told me about her childhood. She had been a Vietnamese boat person as a child. She told me about being attacked by pirates, hauled around from one refugee camp to another in Thailand, treated like dirt by the Thai soldiers, coming to this country with nothing, not a day of formal schooling, no knowledge of English. She related this quite casually without the slightest trace of bitterness. She was a very pleasent, ambitious, intelligent and cheerful person. Her English had a slight accent but was easily understandable. In her case nature had clearly triumphed over a very harsh childhood environment.

Jim: Have you ever read the book CRAZY LIKE US? I recommend it highly – it would explain the refugee’s emotional responses. She has a stable personality type due to both genes and natal culture. More and more I have come to the conclusion that genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger. The modern American environment is good at mass producing two things: sociopaths and psychopaths, take your pick.

My father is a good example: born in poverty, raised in want, survived the Depression (as a young wage earner not a kid), WWII….never had a complaint, not one. His modern counterpart is a different animal entirely. If the same guy were born 25 years ago, he would be commenting on Heartiste, and for good reason.

A stupid though maybe (i am completely clueless about how US census work): If race is self-reported, maybe some people change their mind and write “white” or “mixed” or whatever other choice when they get older, even if they wrote black before? iirc, I read that jedi was quite often the self-reported religion so…

This was also the thought that crossed my mind. It may well be that as they get older, many marginally black males end up becoming more inclined to self-identify as white (or at least, not as black). Of course, you’d have to explain why black women *don’t* do this, but it’s not hard to come up with handwaving explanations…

Give the black/nonblack ratio, this change could be under the radar. If the report change is between black and whites, going from 1 to 0.8 for male/female for blacks would mean going from 1 to 1.03 for whites…(1/7). Although the effect, if it exists, should be seen much more in the other/mixed category. How does this one change?

I want to clarify that “missing” three million persons (see Unz) qualifies as “genocide” even if it takes place spontaneously. A human ecology to which Black males are not adapted may be selectively destroying them.

It’s very important to distinguish between urban black males and American black males in general. The hugely imbalanced sex ratios I mentioned refer primarily to the former category.

Just as I said, there are about 34% extra adult black females across the three cities with the largest black populations, and about 25% more across all American cities with populations of 250K or higher. The vast majority of these “missing” black men are almost certainly dead or in prison.

The 2011 Bureau of Justice Statistics report on prisoners reveals on p. 8 that between 6.6% and 7.5% of all American black males age 25-39 were incarcerated in 2011. However, urban crime rates for robbery and homicide are 3-4 times higher than the national average and only 30% of blacks live in cities, so it seems likely that urban black males are incarcerated at far higher rates than the national average for all black males. I’m not aware of any good data, but a current incarceration rate of 15-20% for urban black males would seem reasonable.

Another slice of the missing black males are probably in the military, but the numbers aren’t that large and I’d guess they draw disproportionately from rural or small-town blacks, so they’re probably a small factor in the urban figures.

The remainder of the missing urban blacks are probably dead, some by homicide but a much larger number by drug/alcohol affliction, accidents, “accidents,” and the general sort of drastically shortened life-expectancy events experienced by a sub-population leading a highly disorderly, homeless, or criminal existence. Since we’re focusing on urban blacks, I have no idea how to apportion these various causes of mortality.

Nationally, I think the number of adult black females is over two million larger than the number of adult black males. That last total obviously includes incarcerated black males, who probably number three-quarters of million or more at any given time. Also add a couple of hundred thousand blacks servicing in the military. So the total number of “missing” adult black males in our society is probably over three million, with 90-95% of those being dead or imprisoned. Hence my use of the term “millions.”

One final point. The true number of “missing” black men is actually considerably higher than the figures I suggest. That’s because my estimate is based on simple gender ratios, and so is partially camouflaged by the number of “missing” black women, who also have quite high rates of imprisonment and premature death.

I took a stats course from a guy who had worked for the DOL during the Depression (not that you could tell,LOL). One day in class he said that we really don’t know exactly how many people were out of work in any given year during the D, we just know a lot of people were un or underemployed.

A lot of black men are missing. That’s my takeaway. I knew this but seeing it laid out so starkly was really an eye opener. It explains a lot, not just in terms of crime.

Virtually of the emotion surrounding these racial soap operas comes from black women. The movement such as it is is run by black male demagogues but the foot soldiers are women. This is common among fascist movements. Hitler was the women’s candidate. Not surprising since 2M German men were ‘missing’ from the electorate in 1932.

Black women are in a very peculiar position in modern America, I would say, unique, and not one that female genes have prepared them for: in the absence of men, they must be men, but they can’t be.

I think this explains a lot of their otherwise inexplicable behavior. The aggressive personality type, the aggressive in your face obesity, the baseless but emotionally satisfying charges ascribing to the “white man” all of their problems (scapegoating), the over-close relationship between black women and their sons, whom they persist in calling “babies” and “children” until well into adulthood. They are under a shit ton of stress and this manifests in their IM rates. They dominate certain office positions in major cities and make them dysfunctional.

Not defending them, just explaining. Having no man in your life, and no dream of it, ever, is an untenable place for an entire class of women to be. The individual woman can handle it and perhaps thrive, depending on circumstances, but not an entire people.

Black American woman are truly liberated. Liberated to enter the gates of hell on earth. Well at least they now have President Sharpton to help them.

“It’s very important to distinguish between urban black males and American black males in general. The hugely imbalanced sex ratios I mentioned refer primarily to the former category.”

Yes, as i would expect because urban blacks largely live in section 8 housing. In NYC, the law is that no one under 18 is allowed to be homeless. Housing services will put a single mother and her children in a project unit ASAP if she files for housing. Single males do not necessarily get housing as the welfare system does not treat their housing need with the same urgency.

If every official renter in the projects answered honestly about who was officially part of her household according to who she signed up with when she applied for housing, you would see a huge disparity between number of women counted and number of men counted because black parents in urban environments are not likely to be married. The project unit is assigned to the single mother and her children. When Demarcus comes home from serving his gang related violence sentence, he does not get a job and become a homeowner. Hence, he isn’t counted in his own home either. Demarcus goes “home” to where he was raised. If a white person were to go home, they would go to their mother’s house. But black children in the projects seem to spend months or years at a time at their mother’s sister’s house or grandmother’s house. It’s like the women of the family take turns for long periods supervising the child. So, a black adult man probably continues to drift between his female relatives housing units and his baby mama’s housing unit. So, he does not get counted even though he is alive.

Maybe you’re talking about large cities, but by the Census definition, about 88% of blacks live in metropolitan areas and about 53% in central cities ( 2000 census – there has been some shift to the suburbs since then.)

Yes, I focused my analysis on the 60-odd major cities of 250K+. These include roughly 17% of America’s total population but 30% of all blacks (and also 30% of all Hispanics), while having 3x-4x the national crime rates for homicide, robbery, etc.

One reason I think that these major cities may constitute a more meaningful dataset than one extending to the much larger number of 100K or 50K “cities” is that those latter ones are far more likely to be overgrown suburbs, of sharply different sociological character. But admittedly, choice of the most sensible dataset may be a matter of opinion.

Either the missing blacks (millions of people) are people that are not registered by police or anyone else as accident/homicide victims or they are people not registered as belonging to households. Why do you assume that these people are dead as opposed to drifting around in the projects?

Since very few young black males are married or even living on a permanent basis with a family or a single woman, but living in cribs by themselves or with others like them, they are never available nor found for the census. The women with kids are counted as they have a permanent home, but the men are out living large in the streets, etc.

If the numbers are right, we are talking about three or more million persons. How could they all live out in the streets? How is that social services dont register the existence of this human mass in the projects or elsewhere?

Either no one has counted them dead or no one has counted them alive. Either indicates that government agencies monitor this population very closely.

It seems like social services relies heavily on internal complaints. People in section 8 housing will notify them that the electricity is not working or that the place is vermin infested. It only takes a couple of old ladies in a building for housing authority to have some idea of what they need to do. But if no one complains about something, then social services may not know it happens.

I read once that someone was keeping full grown pet tigers in a project apartment. If you can get away with that, why not a few of your buds?

One pet tiger in an inherited 3 bedroom apt. In Manhattan yet. Yes, it’s true that these places are terra incognita. I walk past one often (it is just 1 building) and you often see heavily muscled tatted young men lounging about with friendly pit bulls, but does this really account for all these missing men? I don’t think so. I think they really are missing.

BTW, most blacks live in urban areas so what is the diff. between urban black males and black males? Not a lot.

I really don’t think the census bureau is undercounting 3 million people. That’s a few congressmen-worth of people. That’s half the population of Massachusetts. The census also does population estimates in off years – I’d think their statisticians would notice this kind of disconnect. There’s no doubt some undercounting, much to the annoyance of those looking for head-count based Federal largesse, but I’m highly skeptical it could be that high.

Census data is probably actually be that bad. I remember there was one census report on marriage and divorce where the data was massively inconsistent with itself.

The report trumpeted that the female divorce rate was so much larger than the male divorce rate. But if you multiplied the rates by the relevant populations, you found that
the total number of divorce events being reported by women was far in excess of the number of divorce events being reported by men. This is impossible since every divorce event should count once for each side. (Since same sex couplings were a tiny fraction, this did not remotely account for the discrepancy).

I called and emailed the authors of the study, two women, and they proclaimed that their techniques were perfectly sound and there was not even a hint of recognition of what I was saying. I found that rather depressing.

Ron Unz mentioned military, which does remove disproportionately more black men from the “non-institutionalized civilian” population. Also, I suspect that there is some rural/urban divide among employed black men – there may be a higher rate of black men to black women living in rural areas as men are more likely to follow jobs, and there are lots of physically demanding jobs outside of the larger cities. But without strong family formation, women won’t follow “their” men out to those jobs

It may vary from place to place but welfare is often lower if a single woman with kids is living as a couple so the rotating live-in boyfriends don’t officially exist. It’s not something i’ve come across myself but that general pattern may extend to not answering the census.

If so then the missing black male ratio in a location should vary with the percentage employed and married. You should also see a similar effect in rustbelt underclass neighborhoods and other underclass locations except where the gender ratios are being distorted by immigration.

Steve Sailer has shown that relatively few black men make it into the US military. Because they are allowed to use IQ tests (without making it very public knowledge) they can reject many of them, and in current economic circumstances can reject many white and many many black men because they can afford to set a high entry level. US Army is a pretty good job: low chance of getting killed, high chance of getting a pension. On the wider topic of debate, I don’t think any of these black men are “missing” , and they are almost certainly not dead. They are simply not saying where they are on official forms. Not every man wants to answer a busybody’s questions, which may end up in trouble. Can I suggest the cops catch them by the usual technique? You send a limo round to their last known address with busty girl with a TV camera saying that he has won a cable TV prize. She says he is about to lose his chance of winning the prize, but leaves her card anyway. Usually the guys show up quickly. Try it on a representative sample, and then you can measure how many are really “missing”.

Do you have any evidence that a significant number of black men are rejected based on IQ tests? I highly doubt it. I have hard time imagining that significant number of any ethnicity would fail to meet minimum IQ requirements to enlist as an infantry grunt. They would probably take pygmies if they could meet minimum height requirements…

“I have hard time imagining that significant number of any ethnicity would fail to meet minimum IQ requirements to enlist as an infantry grunt.”

Even if that were true if the demand to join is over-supplied then the army can raise the minimum bar as a simple filter.

For example for people from a particular environment being a firefighter is seen as the “best” job by a significant percentage so there’s a lot of competition for the places and the fire service can raise various bars quite high simply to make the hiring process easier – which is interesting if you think about it.